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An Archite&'s Sketch Book
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AN ARCHITECT'S
SKETCH BOOK
Robert Swain Peabody
Some of them see the light for the first time here. All of them are by-
March, 1912
Contents
I. A VENETIAN DAY 1
DURHAM CATHEDRAL 50
LINCOLN CATHEDRAL 50
MARBLEHEAD, MASSACHUSETTS 94
MASSACHUSETTS BAY 96
OFF VENICE 98
AT SEA 104
i
A Venetian Day
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A VENETIAN DAY
1892
the boat landing beneath us busily polishing the steel prows and
the brass sea horses that brighten their craft. Then little by little
the fog grows transparent, and the two pale domes of the " Salute,"
In fact there are one or two others here in Venice that are confus-
ingly like the great Campanile, and except for its great size we can-
not reckon its towering mass as peculiar to Venice alone. St.
and not remarkable for delicacy or purity; yet both on the canal
piazza, and on the side of the Giudecca, where its domes and
slender towers overtop a green grove of trees, it forms a graceful
the sea and its domes are reflected upon a mile or two of green
entice us away from buildings. As the sun mounts high and the
breeze freshens, we leave the Riva and gradually the city fades
into the haze. The green waters are flecked with white caps.
bellying sails banded and starred with red and yellow. Although
they and the "bragozzi" of Chioggia are boxlike, flat-bottomed
power lies in the great rudder which goes far below the boat's
Because the Adriatic boats have always been thus adorned, the
A Venetian Day 5
trabaccolo must have its useless eyes, and has had them since
in somewhat similar craft the Greeks rowed from Athens to
Syracuse or Romans cruised off the Carthaginian shore.
given to the views of the lagoon by the sails of all these vessels.
the wooded banks of the Public Gardens. They look like a row of
brilliant butterflies sunning their outspread wings. On one sail
stern. A handsome crew, looking and talking like pirates and cut-
throats, thus dwell amid holy pictures and images. Each sailor
by the cross.
shuddering at the damp and the cold, to find the azure sky, the
around the hearth. You can walk all about in these fireplaces,
But, after all, an architect does not visit Venice to find cozy
should not call him away from such a city of palaces. Sooner or
even of the fagades of the Gothic buildings, for they are free and
their hues and the mouldings of arch and balcony and cor-
fagade, with great wall surfaces and a few pointed windows, into
a modern front where the essential thing is to permit floods of
But, floating down the Grand Canal, we also pass one by one
the great Renaissance palaces. Again we are struck, as in the
There are good models for the great buildings of to-day among
these rich, well-lighted, stately fronts. Yet to any one who has
been studying Renaissance detail at Urbino or Rome or among the
tombs of Florence, and who has recognized Donatello and Mino
da Fiesole as the masters of such work, the carving even on the
the dainty work that covers the church of the Miracoli. It may
be the material in which it is wrought, or it may be the touch of
the workman, but despite its amount and richness there is some-
carvings and the details of the late work are clumsy and out of
the Old Testament lend their vigorous presence to give color and
Europe.
j
A Venetian Day 9
the host is raised and solemn stillness broods over the crowd of
be compared with any other Christian church the Salute and San ;
Giorgio, the Ducal Palace and the Piazzetta, are certainly objects
of wonderful grace; and possibly, to the architect, the interior of
the sunlit piazza bright with the world of to-day, the smart Ital-
ian officers, the eager tourists, and the happy children from
beyond sea feeding the fluttering doves.
and sparkling vestments, move here and there, and kneel, and
read. Younger attendants serve the incense and reverently bear
the great books, while white-robed men in the high balcony
sing the vesper music. As the loud organ begins to grow a little
far aloft above the sanctuary's gloom, is heard the sweet treble
choirs."
The organ notes cease. The day dies. We grope our way
through the darkly glittering church, and come out upon the
Piazzetta to find the outer world also golden. The white churches
and palaces set against a sky of gold are repeated in the golden
waters, and the last rays of the setting sun permeate and glorify
Later, when darkness falls over the city, we turn the corner of
A Venetian Day 11
ness of the sky is studded with stars, and above San Giorgio is
in dark masses the island church. The slender tower shoots high
above that long line of nave and dome. The buildings of the
port and the convent bring down the composition to the water-
line. Yes, perhaps the interior of San Giorgio, though correct and
fagade some feeble justification for Mr. Ruskin when he says, "It
regard.'' Yet most observers must avow that, whether you call it
between the sky and the wide waters of the lagoon, it is one
forget.
tower comes in a long line to our feet across the rippling water.
Gondolas flit here and there and cross the track of the moonlight.
So sings the chorus as it floats away into the night; and then all
is silence, save for the sound of lapping waves and the distant
Though we are often told that Gothic art never took root in
Italy, many a Gothic arch and crocket and gable show that it had
for long a treatment of its own on Italian soil. True, if Gothic
neither the Italians nor any other people except its French
inventors ever thoroughly mastered its principles. But one can
regard architectural detail as merely a decorative expression, and
joy or sadness, from amid the spiral shafts and pointed arches
city. Its narrow streets are closed in with mediaeval palaces and
the shadow of its slender clock-tower tells off the hours on the
Not far away, however, from these mediaeval Gothic cities lies
sance spirit had free play. It is remote from the railroad, and,
like so many of its neighbors, clings, shaggy and gray, to the
mountain top. For two hours we toil upwards. In the mists far
below us are the green waters "of reedy Thrasymene," and the
where, in the haze, lie Siena and the heights of Perugia and Arezzo.
crowns the city. On the sides of the little square and down
the narrow streets are Renaissance palaces. The church of San
Biagio is a successful example of the Renaissance domed church
with four short arms. If in San Gemignano we see a town that
stopped building with the advent of the Renaissance, its neigh-
prosperous son returned to it, as well as after he left it, the town
must have been a very humble one, for there is nothing in it now
of any interest to the traveler except the little square that is sur-
who lived in the full tide of the Renaissance, and, like his fellows,
the world.
course in Florence itself that we found the visible first fruits of the
ancient Roman models for the figures on his pulpits; but the
much a hundred years earlier, and the wonder is that artists and
coins, and ivories from Greece and Rome; to scholars, who with
avidity sought the classic manuscripts which until then had been
tion of their own time. What the French sculptors of the twelfth
Brunelleschi's was the guiding active mind, the Medici gave the
opportunities, Donatello's refined genius inspired the decora-
the Caesars, and wondered that they had ever fallen away from
the wonderful models all around them.
tion, but the same cannot be said of the Val d' Arno. On the con-
trary, it seemed but fitting that from such surroundings should
river and verdure, gives to the " City of the Lily" half of its
charm. What walks and drives we take in these early spring days
by the wooded banks of the Arno, where men are filling their
hang over the walls that border the roads. Then we emerge
among the green fruitful fields. The broad roofs and white walls
of villa and farmhouse are backed by dark and slender cypresses,
and beneath the vines that are festooned from tree to tree the
ground is bright with anemone and poppy, with cowslip and prim-
rose. We climb the hills above these fertile plains, through olive
orchards and oak woods, to the heights of Fiesole, and look away
over dark pine grove and rocky hillside, and across the hazy
checkered plains, to purple mountains. Far beneath us, the
wonder was built without the aid of wooden centring. Its bar-
first great dome of its kind, and the prototype of innumerable later
mous barren dome, but to find Brunelleschi the artist, the original
piers, and classic caissoned ceilings are the substitute for Gothic
excluded, and what remains is chaste and simple and strictly after
classic Roman models. The rugged walls of the Pitti Palace, also
the cloister of Santa Croce, we find him using dainty and elabo-
architectural methods.
but that imagination readily peoples it with the rich and ardent
life of these early days of the Renaissance. We can forget for the
moment the fresh Italian regiments treading these old gray
streets to the merry notes of their bugles, and see in their places
done on the lines they had laid down. Broadly speaking, they
and the church of St. Peter. His early training enabled him to
add some thing of the variety and force and charm of northern
its rise in the Florence of Brunelleschi and Alberti, and was nur-
dome." But his example had the strongest and most lasting
the love of antique form were joined the consummate skill and
graceful fancy which covered pilaster and panel, capital and
architrave, church stall and marriage chest, with leaf, tendril,
mal forms. All these and the color that enlivened them passed
away with the earlier school, but the close study of the orders
even now individual judgment and offers liberty but not license.
And so let us, not heeding Mr. Ruskin, reckon Scamozzi and
Sansovino and Palladio and the other masters of the later
to have color adorn those rather chilly interiors; and, set off by
gold and fresco, their elegant detail would have given richer
Our party are all familiar with Rome, but we spend one won-
derful Easter Day there. As we traverse its streets, the whole
ence. True, it is not the Rome best known to the oldest of our
The Italian Renaissance 27
party; the Rome of the Great Council, when the streets were full
liant with processions; when the Pope, borne aloft beneath the
when Papal Zouaves made the streets and cafes bright, and the
Ghetto's narrow lanes swarmed with picturesque contadini; when
the Tiber flowed between marshy banks, and death lay in wait
upon the walled river-banks, the wide streets, and the destruction
of dirt and filth, if with regret, yet with a certain approval.
In crossing the city, our road lies by the great temples and the
forums. Accustomed as we are to line-engravings of the orders,
the mighty Coliseum. How humble and minute we feel before the
tremendous mass of that immense structure! How small and
28 An Architect's Sketch Book
insignificant seems the work that engrosses us moderns! One
irreverent thought alone upholds us. It is a comfort to see that
the giants who built it were unable to roof it. A paltry patch of
velarium to keep the sun from the Emperor's eyes, a sad trouble
nese. The sun shines brightly as we reach the piazza before St.
the tower bells as we join the crowds moving up to the doors. All
gallo, and have enjoyed a little lighter refreshment amid the pic-
crowded nave, the piers decked with red hangings, the great choir
singing the service, and the cardinal standing at the lighted altar.
The breath catches ! Mr. Fergusson says that the great pilasters
the worst and most obtrusive taste. Perhaps these or other fla-
grant defects exist, but our little party is satisfied to ignore them
The Italian Renaissance 29
We have learned respect for those who built the church of St.
Peter and the Palazzo Farnese; and we have seen, too, with our
own eyes, how closely they were the descendants and the rightful
with palaces; who built the forums, and vaulted the baths, and
domed the Pantheon, and who raised on its mighty arches the
mass of the Flavian Amphitheatre.
Rural England
Ill
RURAL ENGLAND
1882
and camera, and in spite of all that art and human life have done
handiwork that first claimed our notice and our intense enthu-
siasm. Coming from a land which the summer sun dries and
The ever-varying skies were now bright with sunshine, now filled
were serene and fair. The roadside turf was filled with daisies,
the hedgerow sweet with hawthorn and later with wild rose and
honeysuckle. The fields showed green with crops, blood red with
fox, and one side of all the main roads was finished with a soft
surface for horsemen. Here and there were the brick kennels for
the hunting-packs, and at Taporley the inn has served the hunt
dinner for the last one hundred years. We found Chester in the
While their masters stowed away beef and ale in the inn, the nags
and cut into fanciful figures of bird and beast and, at the larger
Rural England 35
places, the lawn, the garden, and the trees received the same care
as the house itself.
tures; but close to this paradise is the crowded and ugly brick-
nate with crowded and huddled towns. A poor man can have no
land on which to keep a cow; an old woman tells us how her dis-
disfigure the landscape with a new home of his own; and such
evidences that England is no place for a poor man are abundant.
With the Great West and Australia, Canada and South Africa,
holding out great prizes to the energetic poor, one wonders that
so very small.
erned by the few, and in which even the Church has instilled in
little left in England that is not beautiful. " Long and low" are
snap and dash and fire of the French chateaux, such as Pierre-
so close to the ground that you step down into most of them.
Naturally these houses, large and small, were a subject of great
bury you cross a lofty hill and come down into the rough stone
village of Much Wenlock. Then the crossing of another ridge
All along our route lay castles, once the defenders of the Welsh
Marches, from the big castles at Ludlow and Shrewsbury to
the little one at Stokesay. The latter lay in a fertile valley and an
ancient timber-and-plaster gatehouse gave access to it through
a wall inclosing church and castle. The church had the ordinary
square tower with mast and vane. Within was an old Jacobean
gallery and pulpit, and a squire's pew where the high wainscoted
could sleep soundly through the sermon and not even the parson
would know it. The castle itself had a fine keep, or tower, and a
roof of large mossgrown stone slabs. Its great guest hall was
warmed by a central hearth, from which the smoke curled up to
the open timber roof. A staircase of solid oak blocks led above,
and in some of the rooms were remains of richly carved mantels.
and some of "post and pan," as the black oak and white plaster
work is called. Grim wall surfaces gave way to long ranges of
scape, and the mellowness of an old brick wall set in great trees.
Again, the tile roofs, or the yet more beautiful roofs of great stone
slabs, assume in the wet atmosphere such varied hues, such blot-
bright clear land of ours. Our roofs never gain the mossy cover-
ing that lends the great charm to an English tile roof. It is so
days the oak was probably very dark, and the plaster work, as
are the most homelike and delightful in the world. They are the
and the clothes are boiled. Lattice-panes fill the windows, and
are fond of them, every cottage has its neat garden. We should do
well to catch and imitate all this homelike air if we can, but not
live in these damp and stuffy houses. For dryness and cleanliness
The towns and villages are full of alehouses; cozy little places,
with swinging signs of the Blue Bell, the Ship, the Mitre. Each
has a snug bar and an inner kitchen, where sides of bacon hang
on the ceiling beams; where the walls are lined with high -back
settles, and where bootjacks and tankards and pewter dishes sug-
gest possible comfort and cheer. As we sat hastily sketching such
it all down." Another day brought us better luck, and our well-
next village, who was then expected at his home near by.
But of all buildings that the English countryside offers for our
lages; rich and stately, and with history built into it; with ancient
monuments on its walls, and old glass and stone tracery in its
from the gray walls of these ancient temples, and lofty spires soar
for ringing peals by long stirrups, a man to each bell. On the walls
were painted and gilded tablets, recording how, on such a date,
and children play among the old stones and call to one another
room, and then the town seemed with one accord to go to service.
of office, and, with the mace carried before them by the clerk,
walked to church and sat together in the state seats. The pretty
maid who had served our breakfast hastened away after them,
and so did the landlord. So also did the dissenting anglers with
chants, and their voices rang most cheerily in the stone vaults of
but ours was probably more inured to the influences of the old
remembrances which our journey left with us. From the lodge a
Italian character. Towards this entrance side of the house all the
halls and corridors opened; and on the other or lawn side were
and to a view over a widespread lawn. The lofty rooms had stone
fireplaces, and paneled wainscots, and modeled ceilings, some-
what too much "done up" in modern times, perhaps, but still in
holder on each door for the occupant's card. After we had stud-
ied the interior of the mansion, and had disposed of the grand
lady who, as housekeeper, did us the honors, but who was not
above receiving the Queen's money, we found our way through
the intervening hedge, and were in the adjoining church-yard, with
the old graves and the crosses and the sundial. This church, like
on his knees holding aloft the hilt of his sword as a cross; there a
generations; the sundial that had cast its shadow so many quiet
il. land were built by men of the same faith and for the same
Catholic ritual; although England was long under a French
domination and a large part of France was for one or two hun-
stately, and majestic. The English buildings are set amid the
green of cathedral close or village churchyard and blend with a
only of religious feeling but also of the struggle for civil liberty.
It was thus that the king, the bishop, and the people of France
than the other. But no such civil ambitions gave birth to the
at Wells the three time-worn towers rise high above us and group
nobly with the chapter house and its quaint approaches, with
the great octagon of the Lady Chapel, and w ith the backing T
of
tall trees. Above the peace of the bishop's garden and terrace
and the ivy-clad palace from hour to hour the chimes vibrate and
die away:
"Lord, through this hour
seems a lordly habitation for a priest of One who had not where to
lay his head. With the New England minister, who saw his more
favored brother's fields and farm and cattle and books, we ex-
lawns and paths and trees of the close prevail also within the
people of the town, its rich, its poor, the thankful, the unhappy?
Have the great multitude no part in this vast temple that was
knelt to pray, saying, "Hif this sort hof thing goes hon, we shall
soon 'ave people praying hall hover the habbey." However, there
and
"through the long-drawn aisle and echoing vault
down the empty nave and echoes back again from distant vault
50 An ArchitedP s Sketch Book
and chapel. Under these influences we see anew the beauty around
us, and feel that if the Englishman was not the engineer, the
and imprisoned it in pier and vault and tomb and glass, in carved
Let us now turn from the gentle and pastoral beauty of the
which cross the low aisles in giant leaps and carry the thrust of the
ranks about the building. At the east end these splendid scaf-
foldings radiate around the circular apsis and span its chapels.
Far above them, over the crossing of nave and transept, rises the
lofty fleche, enriched with pinnacles and statues, its silver- white
abode, and the dwellings of the old town climb upon and cling to
the Gospel. Above all this, ranks of angels and seraphim fill
the retreating arches and seem to join in the Te Deum and sing,
At every door these celestial choirs meet over your head as you
dow to the pointed gable, and to the tops of the two towers that
long have waited for their spires. Crockets and leafage, statue
picturesque.
tering wooden shoes, and offer each other holy water with their
gars are at the doors. The shrines are tawdry. But as, alike in
village and town, French people live in the view of their neigh-
ever religious devotion the town possesses still daily and hourly
centres here, and certainly the religion here upheld gets close to
the common people. Life and death, hell and heaven, the last
were built.
Of all the features that mark and identify the English church,
circular end, and the aisle encircles that, and is roofed in conse-
French and English Churches 53
details, the cathedral in the French town of Sens, from whence its
the few French cathedrals that have that square eastern termina-
chevet with its flanking chapels; but the French method is the
cincts of the cathedral at Wells. Before us, rich with carving and
shafts and arcading, and with those many statues that are un-
rivaled in similar English work, rises the western front of the great
are insignificant features in the rich fagade. A man can span those
opposite the aisles, and they do not rise much above his head. In
eral mass of the church the bell tower is the most impressive
churches that surround them. Who shall say that those of France
or England are the finer ! If you travel across Normandy, you find
almost every village possessed of a stone-spired church echoing
majestic heights also laid foundations for and sometimes built im-
posing towers and spires. The dignity and seriousness of the south
spire at Chartres, or of those at Saint-Etienne at Caen, or the spire
cause what they aimed at was not beyond reach, or because they
spires, such as those of Lincoln, have now fallen, but France can
The shafts, the mouldings, the carving, and the vaulting that
one finds in the two countries present the same contrasts. At first
adorned only with a large roll on the arrises; and with carving of
but did not emphasize the majestic heights that as time went on
than later work, such as the naves of Amiens and Bourges and
Tours, where the column gave way to the lofty clustered Gothic
and Sens, you miss the aspiring vertical lines of the lofty piers of
There the simple shaft for the great piers that separate nave and
aisle was discarded when the round-arched Norman style was
superseded. The Gothic clustered shaft, less noble, perhaps, but
more intricate and more aspiring, was the constant English form.
As the chisel displaced the axe in the shaping of stone, England
work even the caps and bases are round and formed wholly of
arch, base, and capital form the main enrichment. But at other
nature, is full of its energy, elegance, and vigor, and in its grace-
ful curves and masses portrays all the elements of plant life. In
cated it, as simple as the mouldings of the arches that inclosed it.
ribs were decorated with carved bosses, and the vault surfaces
tan and Roundhead, or than Time itself. Sir Walter Scott was
among the earliest to praise the Gothic minster. His idea was that
the lines of these lofty arches were modeled upon forest forms.
come familiar with it in Sicily and the East; and by yet another
58 An Archite&t's Sketch Book
in a development from Roman art. Sir Gilbert Scott and M.
Viollet-le-Duc attributed the origin and introduction of Gothic
in his scholarly book, has thrown new and clear light on this sub-
ject. He admits that all these influences may have been at work
in the development of Gothic building. He agrees with M. Viollet-
le-Duc that its actual origin was in France, and that it was due to
constructive needs. He points out that in the English church the
frequent; that the vaults are largely supported by thick walls and
the slender piers that carry the vaults are firmly marked inside
and outside; also the entire space between the piers is occu-
piers over aisle and chapel to the great outer buttress, which
In by far the larger part of the English churches the detail one
they were cousins of similar work across the Channel. But Per-
tic carving was more than made up for by noble proportions and
balanced symmetry. What the Perpendicular style lost in poetry
given free rein and her later Gothic buildings were clothed with
pears in the flowing bars of window tracery and the flaming rays
of the great roses, whether it covers with its dainty tabernacle
but still your eyes delight in this fairylike construction and these
fanciful creations. If you try to sketch this work, you respect
60 An Architect's Sketch Book
still more the poetic genius that invented it and the art that car-
nize that the farthest bound has been reached, that the end has
come. But only a philosopher could bring himself to say that
Gothic architecture thus met its fate in a sad decline. The artist
feels rather that in its latest hours, when its work was done, it
and that in this brilliant, fiery burst of flaming beauty the end of
of such authority.
before their readers little but the details and the appellations of
tural design.
Yet the orders have a history and a meaning, and if these con-
ventional forms are far less flexible than the average American
than many books would give one to suppose. The American peo-
ple knew a good deal about the orders a hundred and fifty years
ago, and even through that period in the last century when the
temples of Athens were the models for houses and public build-
easing the harsh angle of post and lintel by binding the spray
of the lotus around the top of the post, or the Ionians as finishing
because they found the form agreeable. The story may be true
though possibly no other cause need be sought for them than the
innate love that man has for grace and beauty. It was an obvi-
ous and natural thing to decorate in these ways the simple post
do with them? Why is not some new and original decoration more
suited to us and our ways? Well, what new and original decora-
tion? Why use meter in poetry? Hexameters have been in use for
course no reason exists why you may not do this if you can find
has only added to their authority and made them almost indis-
you sit has a base and a wide wall space and a cornice. Columns
represents them. The base, the wall, and the cornice may be
elaborated to a greater or less degree, but the parts are those of
these facts. To-day our minds are often distracted from these
main essentials by the thousand petty details and complications
that modern life suggest. Still, when we build a twenty-four story
office building the best arrangement yet discovered is to divide
its vast height into a base of two or three stories, with a lofty
plain shaft of many repeated stories over it, the whole being
for good or bad, come to form the basis of most modern archi-
tectural design.
the influence of the orders. In like manner it may be said that one
can write poetry without any very apparent regard for the usual
poetical meters. Walt Whitman and Bret Harte have done it, and
so perhaps has Kipling. Also, one can paint great pictures with-
among architects there are those who resent or decry the study
and fresh and all their own. Of such are the adherents of "L'Art
America. But, happily, thus far our public ask with increasing
architects who seek originality there are others who are akin
ing academic drawing of the figure crushes out life and interest
in painting are derived from the color and joy of the fields and
forest and the sea rather than from the study of a model. In short,
the nude.
with mediaeval artists, for it is true that there was during the
worst of them better than the best of the Greek ones, and all
new and a
; single inventive human soul could create a thousand
orders in an hour."
dividing line between the art of the Middle Ages and of other pe-
riods. All art has a historical sequence, and, though the mediaeval
architect perhaps did not know it, the base and shaft and capital
pointed arch and its logical use in vault and opening brought new
elements to architecture with new ornaments, but the art of
Rome. There will always be men that find the highest beauty in
this period ; to whom the picturesque and the poetical will make
strong appeal ; and who feel most sympathy with building design
in which the influence of classic art is the least apparent. To
them the orders are not as indispensable objects of study as to
others.
The Five Orders of Architecture 69
Bramante were early students of the ancient work that they found
in Rome. Alberti, Scamozzi, Serlio, and Vignola and many
others reduced to proportional parts such a scheme for each order
Chambers at the end of the last century, are within the reach of
every architect.
Mr. Ruskin says that one can "have no conception of the inani-
ties and puerilities of the writers who with the help of Vitruvius
and gave the various recipes for sublimity and beauty which have
been thenceforward followed to this day." From the dogmatic
should hold to every other it is not surprising that the orders are
invention or variety. This is surely far from being the case. The
70 An Architect's Sketch Book
order of Serlio differed from that of Alberti, and Palladio's pro-
a glance at the orders used in the Doric temples shows how very
varied was that order as used by the Greeks, and how sure was its
Greeks it was evolved from the rough forms of Asia Minor to the
which the Greeks had seen but the early promise, there is all the
and porticos, with vaulted halls and temples and forums of which
We are told that the Greek was the great artist and the Roman
the great constructor. Roman carving was from the hands of
tects upon architecture. Still the Corinthian order was never de-
veloped until it came under Roman influence, and then Roman
conquest spread it throughout Greece itself. It does not greatly
nursery where the study of the orders has been most fostered.
Nothing can exceed the grace and dignity with which they were
used by the French masters of that school in the first half of the
"
last century. It is sometimes questioned whether Parisian " taste
holds now to the standards of the past, but the principles that
govern the use of the orders and the making of a plan still are
regard the advice of the wise and give them both flutings and an
entasis? Then, how can he correct the bow-legged look on the
face, and how adjust the flutings on the return? If the pilaster has
no entasis, where shall the entasis that the column does have be
taken up in the pilaster? What proportions of the many that are
too late, that the essence of such work lies in attenuated orders
and slender details. Surely the use of the orders offers questions
enough to puzzle over, questions that involve the nicest taste and
clearest judgment and widest experience. They are questions that
are perhaps best likened to those that must trouble the writer of a
its author. All the designs have one pervading spirit. Thirty
years ago the work of the designer was more interesting and
We are not going to lose the orders. They are with us to stay,
74 An Architect's Sketch Book
just as much as the poetical framework of the sonnet, which they
sonnets and epics. Burns was a poet as well as Keats, and Millet
a noble order.
On the Design of Houses
VI
travel the history of art forces its treasures before him in blinding
ture has meant in other times and to other people. These bless-
ings have wrought a swifter revolution than any that has previ-
ously affected the arts of design. They have also brought with
them troubles that are quite new and very puzzling. Even our
great-grandfathers were little concerned about the style in which
board. The man of to-day can continue in their steps, but his
a country house, and he will soon agree that the world must
needs be more artless and less sophisticated than we find it to-
day to permit him to ignore the work of the past. A trifling bit
of detail gives a long historical ancestry even to an unimportant
design. To the informed mind the pitch of the roof, the shape
and possibly those designers who can stop with this are the more
fortunate. But, even in a little house, what shall be done with the
inevitable detail of the stairs, the mantels, the porches, and the
furniture? The traces of past human life and art cannot be so
ation with some bygone art. If such questions arise with the
small details of a small house, how much more pressing are they
in work of magnitude.
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On the Design of Houses 79
Why should not the rich American find safe models in the build-
ings of ancient Rome? Indeed, he might do worse, for there is
we find that the villa of the ancient Romans would almost meet
present needs at Lenox or Newport. Colonnades, courts and
cloisters, great sunny baths from which the bathers have a view
of the sea, tennis courts, riding-grounds and amphitheatres,
marble seats and basins, flat lawns surrounded by plane trees
and laurel, all these met the tired Roman when he drove,
men were still living ruder lives than we do now, and yet, anxious
classic ways, they did not copy the old Roman villa, but, with
dinals and princes who built the villas of Italy succeeded natu-
Rome. The villas on the hills around Florence and Siena and
d'Este; the ports and casinos that stud the steep shores of Lake
Como; and the lovely vaulted porches which Julio Romano and
his pupils built and made to glow with dainty arabesque and
delicate color on the rugged sides of Monte Mario; all these
V
On the Design of Houses si
tact with the higher civilization of Italy was introduced into the
ancient fortresses of France. The ancient structure remained
forest of chimneys and dormers grew on the roof, and the car-
vers, abandoning the rugged mediaeval forms, enriched window
foreign artists, the latter were not strong enough to crush out
native talent. As the French had shown themselves great art-
during the Renaissance of classic art. What had the general mass
these French chateaux. For such reasons they are full of sugges-
ing the Middle Ages the efforts of English builders had been
indicate the coming change in art; and yet Elizabeth came to the
throne in 1558, only six years before Michael Angelo died.
fense gave way to the desire for comfort and luxury and light and
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On the Design of Houses 83
such buildings. They have but little detail that ties them to any
given period. They are simple, wholesome, and direct architec-
ture. In these honest plain buildings the unbroken traditions
legacy of the Gothic tradition, but they soon were crowded with
with the modes which were then prevalent in Europe, but which
84 An Architect's Sketch Book
were not fully understood in England. France under Francis I,
subjected to the same influences, made the Italian " motifs " her
own and gave them a new and peculiar beauty. England was
66
satisfied to adopt the motifs" and be content with the richness
All this change was the same as that which, caused by the
court who could not parley Euphuisme " was as little regarded
gallant calls the cows "the milky mothers of the herd" and the
youth who tends them "most bucolical juvenal." Indeed, the
cherubs and wreaths and shells that are applied to the truly
version of Italian detail made it far more easy for the ruder
the five orders, and depended for guidance and help mainly on
Staircases, which before this time had been of stone and which had
been valued solely as means of communication, now became or-
namental and stately. They were generally of oak and very often
on the posts. The designer's skill was also freely spent on man-
that does not bear close analysis. In spirit and in shape these
houses form a type that is distinct and national, and as they were
and the manor and farm dimly recalled the round towers and
lofty roofs of the chateau. But all English architecture starts
On the Design of Houses 87
with the home as the unit, and as the grandeur of the house in-
Our wealthy client by this time will probably find this dis-
with which he may affiliate his design, and we are far from the
end. That we have this wealth of authority prodigally placed
indeed like the real artist of all time, try to adapt the art of past
only please for a time. In fact, only ignorance is blind to the past.
88 An Architect's Sketch Book
On the other hand, slavish copying is unmeaning, pedantic, and
stupid. Shall we go without bathrooms because an English-
man Hubs" ' it? Shall we forego piazzas because they are not
ages to our own uses. This is the only work worthy of an artist,
The American house thus conceived will surely have one final
palaces.
VII
BY THE SEA
1898
can satisfy the lover of the sea. If the sough of the breeze
in it the murmur of the ocean. Rivers, woods, and hills are for
others. Give him the briny air blowing in from kelp-laden ledges;
spray dashed from the bow of his boat; the wide spread of blue
water stretching far to the horizon, where coasters silently pass
from the beach." When fog settles down and lies thick over land
have conquered fog, and the fisherman on the Banks, the deep-
sea sailor on the ocean, and the yachtsman along our shores must
alike hold it in dread. But almost any weather that is not foggy
lures many a man from the beach and gives him his best holidays.
In the break of day our boat glides silently from the sleeping
harbor. We pass the green ramparts of the fort, and the sentinel
;
The sea is rosy with the early sunlight, but here and there the
rising breeze breaks it into ripples and these grow and broaden
and join until the whole sparkles. The ocean swell meets us as
fense and the danger of our harbor, there is smooth green water
flecked with foam. Outside, where the surges break, are advanc-
ing rollers and ebbing torrents, a roar of waters and the scream
of circling gulls. Sailing far beyond all this, we get due bearings
on the distant shores ; then down come our sails and we are at
anchor.
as on the sea. The ocean and the sky are each full of change,
but the story they tell is as simple as it is grand. For ages the dry
land has been combed and furrowed and planted and sheared
but man has been as powerless to change the surface of the sea as
The waves sing the same song that they did when the boundless
deep was gathered into one place and God saw that it was good.
The sea remains as majestic as when the Spirit of God first moved
upon the face of the waters.
Away in the distance the world we have left behind has faded
horizon bounds the waves that encircle us. The golden path-
way to the sun starts from our feet. What might be an over-
purse and see the shower of silver fall glancing into the boats.
The whole picture rises and falls with the deep-sea roll. The
waiting schooner, the seine boats with their groups of working-
men, the long sweep of the net buoys all swing into one graceful
group, and the next moment they drop behind a great roller, and
of this scene of bustle and activity nothing is visible but the
schooner's sails.
can be found rowing a heavy dory five or six miles out to sea,
and just as the sun rises and as the tide begins to flood he
After all, is it not to such people in other walks of life that luck
comes?
But energy and laziness are strangely mingled in the dwellers
There you see how the men of the town have met death in ship-
wreck and battle, amid adventure and danger, doing men's work.
Indeed, here is told on one memorial stone how sixty -five of them
went down in one terrible gale on the Grand Banks. As far back
Long Island. The same amphibious body rowed him and his
nals are full of the stories of the courage and daring of the men
who manned these ships and of the sufferings of the several hun-
The local heroes are not the wise or the learned or the good,
but men of action; Captain Mugford, who with his boat crews
captured an English war vessel; General Glover, who led the
Martin, the butcher, who, when the call came in 1861, left his
By the Sea 97
from Ceylon and Sumatra. Later, Salem vied with our own
town in sending out privateers, and the waters where we are
now fishing were the rendezvous of all these armed ships. Dur-
ing the Revolution Salem equipped at least one hundred and
prizes, and during the War of 1812 forty privateers sailed from
that now sleepy port. The ships commanded by one captain alone
after prize was sent in by him and his fellow fighters, our quiet
waters must have been the scene of much activity and excite-
were perhaps but two or three men from our town in the Navy
during the Spanish War, although she sent a full company
into the Army. There is no commerce to speak of at our
own wharves. The great range of warehouses that line the long
98 An Architedt's Sketch Book
piers at Salem, once filled with silks and teas and nankeens, now
moulder empty by the deserted harbor. Have these old commu-
nities, like so many others through the country, irrevocably suc-
cumbed to modern life? Are the energy and brains that once
found employment at home now absorbed by the great cities?
hope that the old spirit is but dormant, and that new circum-
seiners with seine boats in tow, puffing tugs and ocean liners and
three-masted coasters, they all go by us, way off, hull down on
the dim horizon. To-day, at any rate, all the coasting cargoes
hand lines. Failing these, our waters are swept clear by trawls
and seines and traps, so that the fish and lobsters whose nurseries
are among our rocky headlands have no chance to multiply.
By the Sea 99
When November comes and the great codfish come in from out-
side to spawn on the rocky ledges, they are met by trawls, four
cod seines floated near the bottom by glass floats, tended by dories
the present laws only limit the length of those that maybe taken.
the west the clouds pile up leaden and brown in ponderous masses.
Slowly the threatening curtain moves towards us, the edge of the
storm cloud showing ragged and frayed against the dead white
sky. Then with thunder growls and lightning flash and furious
while the windows of heaven are open the world is for a space
until the tempest passes down the coast and long slanting gleams
There are days when the sea is leaden and oily, when the air is
laden with the smell of fish and the distant shores look near and
hard; but even then it needs but a fresh wind from the north-
west to change all this, and in their turn come clear air and
sparkling waters and a bright gladness everywhere. Then down
the opposite shore sails the great white-winged procession of
coasters that have sought a lee during the bad weather. There
they go, fifty sail of them, in long single file laden with lumber
and laths and coal and lime and bound across the bay.
Why are we, cooped up in dull offices, shut off from these great
wonders? Perhaps we should find hard the lot of the lobsterman
By the Sea 101
who hauls his pots off the brown rocks of our shores, or of the
fisherman who sets his seines on the broad sea, but they have
their compensations, for "These men see the works of the Lord 5
picturesque one on our coast. The town is old and the houses rise
that it commands and dominates the hill and dignifies every view.
This tower-crowned hill forms a pleasing background to the
that the ports of the Old World offer. There are no long-winged
lateen rigs; nothing like the great Thames barges with their
are no such brilliant winged boats as one sees on the Adriatic, nor
Holland and England send to the North Sea and the Channel,
trade around the British Isles. It is true that a few old pinkie
sterns on the Maine coast recall by their high poops the castles of
mediaeval vessels and can claim close descent from the May-
flower and the Arbella. But, except for these, the boats in which
102 An Architect's Sketch Book
Irish and Portuguese fishermen cruise about Massachusetts Bay,
and the Johnny wood boats from Nova Scotia are about all that
we can show of the ancient fashions. The ancient and the pic-
rapidly or to ride out the gales on the Banks and bring fish
the future rather than respect for the past. Hence are left to us of
torial than those that Vander Velde had before him when paint-
that we see at Antwerp and The Hague. But for all that, one may
well envy the occupations of painters like De Haas and Norton
and Quartley and Winslow Homer, who have pictured sea life and
who daily drew the beauties of sea and sky on our coasts.
sixty feet long and manned by four or five men. We wonder how
these vessels were controlled and what happened when a miser-
able oarsman missed his short, jerky stroke or fell at his labor. But
our curiosity is greater still about the feats of those early sailors
high castles fore and aft, their bellying sails and flaunting ban-
ners and their more or less open hulls should have made them an
easy prey to the hungry rocks and the tempests of the North Sea.
But how did Sir Francis Drake bring home safe his almost equally
clumsy ships, and how did Cabot and Columbus and Magellan
cross the wide oceans on their unwieldy craft? Doubtless they
and more? If they once did strike a trade wind that wafted
them across, how did they know where to seek an equally fair
wind to bring them back over strange waters? Yet Columbus and
Magellan did somehow knock off as many miles of progress a day
appear more clumsy than they really were. But even if this is so
that we may feel sure that the ships of the early navigators were in
and overhanging galleries, though they were well rigged and well
handled ; but on some of the American frigates clumsiness of
easy runs beneath the water. The hulls of the American clipper
packets and Baltimore slavers assumed the finer lines that give
104 An Archite&t's Sketch Book
fleetness. The introduction of steel rigging and masts and hulls,
and, more than all, of steam, completed the revolution, until be-
who of all people are the most conservative and who hold fast to
speech and ways and facts wrung from the bitter experiences of
its early prototype than has the modern ship from that of the
days of Columbus. Jack Tar through all the changes keeps much
the same. His world is still all his own and in it the landsman is
ways that have been proved fit by centuries of fighting with wind
and wave and tide and calm. Indeed, because the vessel that
thus comes from his hands has lines in sympathy with the ele-
occupy other days. Still no architect can fail to notice that the
white hull and tall, shining masts of the crack yacht, and by the
water. Over by the fort an anchor chain runs out with a rattle as
the fishing schooner ends her day's work. The click of the lobster-
men's oars sounds across the harbor. From the fields comes the
scent of bay and fern and rose, freshened by the recent rain.
Bugles sound from the fort, and as the sun dips in the west the flag
comes down. The harbor begins to sparkle with riding lights.
We near the wharves and they lower over us black and forbid-
ding, but behind the tower-topped hill, the sky is aflame with red
and purple and gold; and above us is a pale and slender moon.
THE END
CAMBRIDGE MASSACHUSETTS
U S A
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